What was likely to happen if you took a group of feisty 17-year-old London girls and dropped them into the heart of Cornwall in the 1940s?

Dropped into Cornwall and then made to work as hard as any man, clearing stones, pulling thistles and cutting broccoli on freezing cold mornings. Not to mention the unending potato harvest.

Of course, these girls had all volunteered to join the Women's Land Army, and they knew that the drudgery was all part of the war effort. But that didn't stop them constantly looking for ways to avoid work. They hid in the corn crop plucking their eyebrows, writing letters or even darning socks.

The local farmers responded to the girls with various degrees of welcome. Some were frankly hostile.

A few of the girls rebelled and returned to city life. Most of them battled through, making the most of the local dances and the Yanks. Some, like the author, even settled down in Cornwall as a farmer's wife.

These memories are vivid, humorous and detailed and they show just what did happen to this high-spirited gang.

The Cornwall gang. Pat Peters is in the front row, second from the right.

04/12/2009

On Friday Andrew Arbuckle launched his first book, Footsteps in the Furrow.

Andrew chose the village hall at Luthrie in East Fife for his party. It was to a farm in this area, seen behind Andrew in the photograph (left), that his grandfather came from the West of Scotland in about 1903.

Andrew's book, more fully described in the blog of February 11th, is a loving but unsentimental testament to Fifeshire farming - its variety, pleasures, pains, humour and the changes of the last century.

About a hundred guests gathered in the hall, including many from Fife to whom Andrew had talked when he was gathering information and photographs for the book.

While he was farming and after he retired Andrew enjoyed a long career as an agricultural journalist. Former colleagues were well represented among the guests one of whom, Bill Howatson (right) - now Provost of Aberdeenshire - paid tribute to the book.

The Provost described it as 'the collected customs, stories, working practices, living conditions and lifestyles of farming folk.'

'The book,' he continued, 'chronicles the basket of skills shared by farmers and workers, men and women, making a living from the land. It records the transformation of this part of Fife with sensitivity, understanding, sympathy, and no small amount of love.

'I am sure Footsteps in the Furrow will join the rich tradition of rural writing, and become a singular contribution to our understanding of farm and rural life. It is a well-researched, thoroughly enjoyable piece of work that will strike a chord not only here in Fife, but in rural Scotland as a whole.'

04/07/2009

No, not Ipswich Town football team, sometimes referred to as the Tractor Boys, but Stephen Richmond and Jonathan Whitlam, the duo who have inspired and filmed so many programmes on tractors and farm machinery.

At the Spalding model tractor show this weekend Stephen and Jonathan were promoting the first programme to be released under their own label, Tractor Barn Productions. Their initial DVD, due shortly, is Working Tractors Volume 1. For more information check The Tractor Barn

04/03/2009

Footsteps to the Furrow by Andrew Arbuckle, paperback 344 pages including illustrations, is now in stock at Old Pond Publishing, £9.95. Covers in detail the wide-ranging Fifeshire agriculture of the 20th century. For more details see blog 11 February.